


wheat, chaff

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Baggage, Future Fic, Infidelity, Jack-Centric, Kent "Hit Me Baby One More Time" Parson, M/M, Rough Sex, Smoking, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 15:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4966240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kent’s body is no temple, and Jack is no saint, no matter how many times he kneels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wheat, chaff

**Author's Note:**

> Dear CP fandom, I am SO SORRY.
> 
> Many thanks to Jenny for the beta. <3

“I loved you,” Kent says afterwards.

 

*

 

Bitty is great. Bitty is amazing, and Jack wants to be the kind of guy who can say his partner is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s never gonna be him, though.

He’s the guy who took a detour on the way to achieving his dreams. The expectations don’t stop there, of course; now he plays as hard as he can, does everything his body can do and puts his brain into it as well. Conserves energy, then throws it into the game. It’s the NHL. It’s the big leagues. It’s home.

Bitty is amazing, but he probably deserves better. Jack risks his health for a living and _loves_ it. Kent loves it too.

Kent’s body is no temple, and Jack is no saint. He’s not made for reverence, no matter how many times he kneels.

 

*

 

Bob Zimmermann never cheated on Alicia. From the day he met her, that was it - that was his life: hockey and his girl, hockey and his wife, hockey and his family. He never cheated on her, but she didn’t always come first.

Jack’s twenty-six when he realizes that about his parents. He’s holding on to Kent’s headboard, facing the taupe wall, and Kent’s fucking him hard, pushing his knees into the pillows. He’s thinking about Bitty, letting the sharp-hot guilt of it push him over the edge, when he suddenly remembers this one time he was watching a game with his mom and his dad took a bad hit. They went to the hospital later, and Alicia asked Bob, “Do you want to know the score?”

He said yes. He was fresh out of surgery, and he said yes. She knew where his priorities were. They spent a few weeks at home together. It was the first time Bob had time to give Jack one-on-one lessons.

Bitty knows, too, but he doesn’t _know_. Maybe it’s because Jack’s not an enforcer, so there’s no clear divide between the player and the person. There’s no Hulk, no Mr. Hyde. There’s just Jack Zimmermann, his boyfriend who plays hockey professionally.

Kent’s always fucked him like they were fighting for possession. Jack’s never had to ask him to go harder. He never had to tell Kent not to leave marks, because all of Kent’s marks were bruises, and everyone expects Jack to be bruised.

Jack’s life went like this: hockey and his family, hockey and pills, hockey and class, hockey and Bitty. The catch is that Kent is hockey, no ‘and’ about it.

 

*

 

Kent once told Jack that his dream was to go to an Original Six team. Jack wanted to play in Canada, but he didn’t tell Kent. He didn’t tell anyone, and it was half a victory when he OD’d, because at least he got to go home. At least he got a reprieve.

Eighteen-year-old Jack, closeted pill popper Jack—he would hate twenty-six-year-old closeted adulterer Jack. Not for the closet bit or for the adultery, but because he’s learned that he isn’t a saint. He likes playing for the Falcs, even though there’s no legacy there. He’s not living up to anything except for his drive. He got more of that from his dad than he did talent, in the end.

He doesn’t think he’s that selfish of a person, he just has limits. He’s good at compromising in order to avoid hitting those limits without taking his eyes off the prize. Detours are fine. Giving his body what it needs even if he doesn’t like living with it is fine.

Kent turned his newbie team into a Stanley Cup franchise. Jack goes to the Falconers, and sometimes he lets Kent remind him that he’s meant for bruises. He still plans to win the Cup before he’s thirty. He still holds Bitty’s face between his hands so, so carefully; he kisses both Bitty’s eyelids, forgives himself for everything else when he puts Bitty first.

 

*

 

They’re in Jack’s hotel room the first time. Bitty is a Before and After, but Jack’s only counting the NHL for Kent. So: they are in Jack’s hotel room, Jack has a contract, and the captain of a Stanley Cup team goes down on him slowly, carelessly. Jack grins down at Kent, and Kent raises an eyebrow back.

Jack ruffles his hair, and Kent scrapes his teeth down Jack’s dick before he deepthroats for a few seconds. Jack’s eyes roll back in his head.

Their last time was right before the draft, right before Jack’s pills kicked in. Before and After. He knows that Kent feels bad he didn’t stick around longer that morning, that he’s also proud he went first. He deserved it, Jack thinks. Jack was the next Bad Bob, but Kent was all his own, a generational talent. He’s the start of a legacy, not something inevitable like the name Zimmermann on the back of a jersey.

Jack makes Kent come faster than Kent got him off by a whole minute. They talk about conditioning as they get dressed. The whole thing just feels... easy. Honest. When Jack closes the door behind Kent, absolutely nothing has changed – then he thinks about Bitty, and Jack realizes he was wrong. Something did change. Something about the awful tenderness he feels for Bitty, the distance it puts between them, the gloves Jack wears when he touches him.

He hadn’t noticed it before.

 

*

 

Alicia tells Jack that Bitty is good for him, and Jack says, “Too good.”

“No. No, no. He makes _you_ better at balancing everything.”

He loves his mom, but right then he hates her a little, because she’s right. He can’t give up Bitty. Of all the things and all the people Jack could’ve found to make him a person, to make him something more than a body on the ice, Bitty is the best he’ll get.

He wishes he was the kind of guy who found someone like Bitty and put them first, but he’s not. Not always. Just enough that Bitty’s happy. Enough that he’ll stay.

 

*

 

“I loved you,” Kent says. He’s smoking a cigarette he found in his jacket pocket, Vegas stretched behind him like a night-lit postcard. He smiles at Jack through the smoke, then turns around, becomes a silhouette.

“For how long?”

Kent shrugs. The bruises on his back are mesmerizing. Jack’s hands itch for a camera, for his stick. For Bitty’s unblemished skin.

“I love him,” he confesses, smaller than he’s been in all the years they’ve known each other.

“And this is how you keep him,” Kent says, so Jack doesn’t have to. “I know what that’s like.”

He leaves the last drag for Jack.


End file.
